Meet Kalpah, The Vizag Based Start-Up That Is Creating Ripples In The Field Of Ophthalmology

Kalpah, a Vizag based start-up, is now revolutionizing the patterns of healthcare innovations so much that it even went on to get recognized and awarded one of the most ‘Innovative Startups’ in the state of Andhra Pradesh. They have received this award directly from the hands of Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh N. Chandrababu Naidu, recently at a summit in Vijayawada.

What does Kalpah do?

Kalpah is an Ophthalmic R&D startup. Their vision is to eradicate blindness by making use of technologies. The team has already developed a software to detect glaucoma just by making use of retinal images. They are also working on a stroke analysis algorithm that analyses the retinal picture to understand if the person is prone to cardiac or cerebral stroke. Apart from that, the team is also using advanced technologies like Deep learning, Big data & Image Processing.

The beginnings:

Udaya Yayati, a bio-medical engineer, founded Kalpah in 2014. Before that, he had his share of hard work and passionate struggle. He had worked for some reputed healthcare companies in Germany and Finland. With the experience he had gained and the contacts he had developed, he is firmly focusing on the gaps in the technology to bring affordability in ophthalmology. After almost two years of research and development, the startup launched its first product very recently, Retinal Image Analysis for Glaucoma (RIAG).

Glaucoma is a medical condition that damages the eye’s optic nerve, which might lead to permanent loss of vision.

Their first product RIAG is an advanced automatic glaucoma analyzer or a web-based algorithm, which detects glaucoma by making use of fundus images. Fundus is the interior lining of the eyeball. Udaya says, “Currently, there is no homogeneity in the disease detection and the analysis is often subjective depending on doctors. RIAG integrates the fundus image with its algorithm to provide accuracy in the disease prognosis.”

Dr. Gopala Raju, Founder of Visakha eye hospital realized the potential of this technology & went on to become their first client. Sanjeevan Netralaya from Hyderabad is also another client of Kalpah’s. Apart from this, the team is currently in the process of cracking deals with some big technology giants.

Future goals:

Their future plan is to develop a software suite with advanced algorithms to detect different types of retinal diseases just by the retinal images. They did their initial stages of pilot testing in Medanta & AIIMS and launched a glaucoma analyzing software in July this year & have sold licenses to various institutions.

“We have tested the algorithm on around 5,000 images and the results have been exceptional with an accuracy of 95.3 percent,” says Sachin Yadav, the design and marketing head of Kalpah. For its future products, the startup has collaborated with Belgium-based research center Vito, University of Graz in Austria apart from a team of six doctors from across leading Indian healthcare firms like AIIMS, ESI, and Medanta and VVIT Engineering College, Guntur.

A. Murtaza, Avinash Pandey, Piyush Chaturvedi and Rohit Dutta constitute the set of amazing individuals in the team who work towards developing the products. “The operational cost at present is Rs. 3 lakh per month. Currently, we are in talks with investors and hoping to raise $3 million in a year-and-a-half span. We are also working on a stroke analysis algorithm that analyses the retinal picture to understand if the person is prone to cardiac or cerebral stroke,” says the optimistic Udaya, founder of Kalpah.